I’m a very happy man this morning because I’m honoured that members of my family are here today: our daughter, Adele Mary Harden, artist in residence at the Great Canadian Theatre Co., from Canterbury High School; and Dr. Clare Louise Roscoe, part of the Children’s Hospital emergency room team, both beloved to me. Thank you for everything both of you do to make me be here. Thank you for coming, guys.

My question is for the Premier: 134,000 people in the Ottawa region don’t have a nurse practitioner or family doctor. They’re part of the 2.3 million people in Ontario that don’t have that coverage. These neighbours rely on unsuitable walk-in clinics or crammed hospital emergency rooms to get basic health care needs.

For weeks, I’ve heard the government talk about plans to open 78 primary care practices, but we don’t have any details. Will the government today commit to providing a public list of these 78 clinics?

So, again, Speaker—very clear, yes or no: Will the people of Ontario get this list of 78 clinics today?

I take what my friend has said to heart. I think people do want to live at home. They want to be at home. They don’t want to be in hospitals. A number of persons with disabilities and seniors I’ve spoken to don’t want to be admitted into long-term care. That is a personal choice they’ve made.

But what you’ve said and what the government has introduced to date has not done anything about the fact that we are losing 30% on the dollar of every—there’s a billion dollars contemplated with this bill, as I understand it. We are losing a third of every dollar we’re spending because we’re lining the pockets of the for-profit companies. So all the good work that you’re going to do to take those thousand people and bring them back home into the community—if they can’t get a care worker to show up on time, if those care workers are double-booked, if their travel isn’t covered, if they’re not making decent salaries, if they have no pensions and no benefits, then I believe your bill is set up to fail.

What I’m going to do just to punctuate the point for my friend from Oshawa is to say this: Can you imagine an Ontario where there was an agreed-upon minimum standard of compensation for all PSWs? The government, through Ontario Health, could do it right now. That is what Denmark does. There is one standard of pay, one standard of benefits, one standard of travel being covered. Can you imagine that?

I can tell you, for any lawyer working for this government right now—you better believe there’s a minimum standard that they expect to be paid. Any deputy minister? Oh, there’s a minimum standard of what they expect to be paid. And they work hard. Why can’t we do the same for PSWs? Why do we have to watch them be gouged by greedy companies that have been ripping off the public purse for too long? That, I believe, my friend, is what’s hurting Cindy, and we need a government that’s going to stop that and stop it right now.

What I would say to all of those homes that are being built that are culturally appropriate homes—I want the workers who are going to work in those buildings to know that they have the right to join a union. We had SEIU Healthcare in this building not long ago. They should sign up to SEIU Healthcare, because right now there’s no government that’s willing to guarantee a standard of living and wages.

The member is a nurse, and I respect the work that she has done in the province of Ontario. The member benefited from that work done by the associations representing her profession.

I want to see PSWs valued more and paid more. That is the missing piece, honestly. Back to my friend: We can build homes. Homes and beds are great infrastructure. But what makes them come alive are the people who work in them. So that is the thing we need a government to do. And if this government isn’t prepared to do it, believe me, in 2026, there will be a government prepared to pass laws to ensure PSWs are paid appropriately, their travel is covered, they have pensions and benefits just like all of us in this building.

Back to the health minister: One of two operating rooms at the general campus of the Ottawa Hospital was closed last Saturday when a nurse had to call in sick. That meant one less OR for major trauma incidents in our city. But do you know what was open last Saturday? The for-profit corporation that has been operating at the Riverside campus of the Ottawa Hospital and poaching nurses from our existing hospital infrastructure. This minister and this government, I’m going to assume, are going to insist there’s no link between these things, but I believe the president of the nurses at the Ottawa Hospital, Rachel Muir, who says there is.

Speaker, will today be the day, finally, that this government comes to grips with this obsession with for-profit health care and how it is hurting our hospitals?

Interjection.

My question is for the Premier.

Operating rooms at the Riverside campus of the Ottawa Hospital have been leased to a private, for-profit corporation on Saturdays for the last while. The 26 surgeons running this for-profit corporation have been hiring nursing staff from the Ottawa Hospital’s public OR rooms. Nurses are being offered twice their normal salary. The surgical equipment for this clinic is shipped in from Toronto. On the surface, it doesn’t seem to make sense. But what has also never been clear to me is how this for-profit clinic was approved in the first place.

Can the Premier clarify if this clinic was given his government’s formal approval to operate?

My question is for the Premier. Speaker, it has come to my attention that cancer patients waiting for surgery right now at the Ottawa Hospital are being bumped by clients of the for-profit clinic that’s been operating on Saturdays at the Riverside Campus of the Ottawa Hospital. This for-profit clinic has been offering nurses double the wages they earn in our public hospital system, and that has had an impact on our public system’s ability to have the staff capacity ready for cancer surgeries for patients in urgent need. This is what I’m being told privately by hospital staff who fear the repercussions for speaking publicly.

Speaker, a very simple question to the Premier: Will they commit today to investigate this matter?

My question is to the Premier. Good morning, Premier.

A private, for-profit surgical clinic is operating for the second time this Saturday at the Riverside Campus of the Ottawa Hospital from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Meanwhile, there is a long backlog of orthopaedic surgeries—over 2,000—to members of the public who are waiting for the public health care they were promised. This is another example of our public operating rooms being closed to the public who paid for them but open to the profit of a select few.

A question to the Premier: Will this government get public operating rooms fully up and running for everyone?

Interjections.

It is a sad day when there are nurses in this building who work very hard for us every single day, we ask serious questions about the attack on the funding of our public hospitals, and we get talking points back.

What we know in Ottawa today about this clinic is that nurses are being offered, inside our public hospitals, twice the salary to work in these for-profit, private clinics. We know it’s going to get harder to keep nurses in our public system as a result of your efforts to hand over these surgeries to for-profit clinics.

A serious question, Speaker: Is this government going to invest in our public operating rooms instead of selling them off or renting them out?

I want to thank the leader of our party, the MPP for Davenport, for putting this motion on the floor today.

I want to thank our health critic, the member for Nickel Belt, for so articulately saying what is really at risk right now in this moment: It is the well-being of our hospitals—let’s be very clear—because if you take these surgeries, 50% of available surgeries, and you hand them as a gift to Tory-run, private, for-profit clinics, you jeopardize the funding of our hospitals.

Do you know who’s not fooled, Speaker? Rachel Muir is not fooled. Rachel Muir is the president of ONA Local 83 back home. She leads all the nursing units at the Ottawa Hospital campuses. Rachel texted me Friday night with a revelation: A private for-profit clinic was going to be operating for the first time the following morning, at 7 a.m., at the Riverside campus of the Ottawa Hospital. She learned about it because members of her union had been approached, as the member for Ottawa West–Nepean just said, in the hospital, near the ORs, about whether they would work in this private, for-profit organization running out of a public facility. So I’ve just learned, if you’re a health care professional, how you get a raise under this government—it’s not at the bargaining table, with Bill 124 and all the assistance they give their lawyers fighting people in court; you go for 100 bucks an hour, and you work for one of the private operations run by one of their friends. That’s how you get a raise from this government. Well, guess what? Rachel sees through them.

Do you know who else sees through them, Speaker? Marilena Fox. Marilena Fox is a recording secretary of CUPE 4000. That is the group that represents almost all the workers at the Riverside campus of the Ottawa Hospital.

Did anybody ask people in administration, housekeeping, patient transportation, foodservice, trades, nursing, personal care attendants and orderlies—were any one of these people approached by the Ottawa Hospital or this government, the Ministry of Health, before they embarked on this for-profit experiment in our public system? What do you think, colleagues? Not a single one. And yet they call them heroes in this place. I just heard it over there: “We love our nurses. We love our orderlies.” It’s a load of nonsense if you walk into their workplaces and disrespect them.

This Thursday, the nurses will be rallying outside the Sheraton hotel here in this great city of Toronto. And the members of the New Democratic Party are going to be with you, nurses. We’re going to be with you, CUPE. We’re going to take on this government and embarrass them the way the education workers of CUPE did in November. Get ready for a very, very hot winter.